New & raw web based Dominion II game server

[Esben Mose Hansen]

Hi,

I just made a web page capable of starting a few Dominioins II games from my server. Come and try, start a few games :-D

It's made from Perl, IO::Pty, Apache, Perl::CGI and mysql --- all running on a Hardened Gentoo Linux.

Please be gentle with my server --- it's quite small, and can only handle so much. I'll be asleep the next 8 hours or so, but afterwards I'll certainly help with any trouble you spot :-)

I know the game options are really lacking, and so is the fact that everybody can start a game. Be patient, and it will come! Oh, and help would be nice, too. If I distribute it, it will be GPL'ed (it uses mysql, which I believe is GPL).

Here's the link:Dominions II Game Server

[Gandalf Parker]

Looks nice. Did you check out the server threads here? such as this one?

You went with starting a full service tcp/ip game. Nice setup. The community thanks you.

I was going to try and go the other way. Some sort of web-based upload of the .2h file is about the only hangup I think. Then it would be easy to provide a web-based download of .trn files. That would allow a "host at midnight" run thru all the game files. Alot more games could be done on one machine but its taking a long time to iron out.

[ February 14, 2004, 23:01: Message edited by: Gandalf Parker ]

[Norfleet]

Did you want us to merely test the game-starting functionality, or attempt to break the server?

[Argitoth]

How are you going to get past the temp-file crashes?

[Gandalf Parker]

Originally posted by Argitoth:
How are you going to get past the temp-file crashes?

I havent had that on a linux machine. Just on Windows. But if it did happen it wouldnt be hard on linux to check for it and reload

[ February 14, 2004, 23:31: Message edited by: Gandalf Parker ]

[Johan K]

I tried to test it. But I got this error message when I tried with port 6677 and later with port 16563. (0 vp, 0 req vp, map aran)

-------------------
An error occurred while attempting to launch game:

You must specify a valid port

[Esben Mose Hansen]

Originally posted by Gandalf Parker:
Looks nice. Did you check out the server threads here? such as this one?

You went with starting a full service tcp/ip game. Nice setup. The community thanks you.

I was going to try and go the other way. Some sort of web-based upload of the .2h file is about the only hangup I think. Then it would be easy to provide a web-based download of .trn files. That would allow a "host at midnight" run thru all the game files. Alot more games could be done on one machine but its taking a long time to iron out.

Yeah, I did check out the server threads, and will do so again now that I have the basic setup. To get some more ideas. And you're all welcome --- thank me by playing with me

I chose the TCP/IP setup over the mail-based setup simply because I liked the feel of a TCP/IP server. A mail-based server would be able to handle a substantial load, though, so that would be great, too! I think my little server would be able to handle perhaps 5--10 TCP/IP game before becoming too slow.

Also, I think it is perhaps a bit more challinging to make a mailbased server. If I did, I would base it on a sendmail clone and a CGI webpage. Then I would have each game have it's own (maybe virtual) mailbox, or maybe filter on subject. When the server has run I would simply email the turns back. This would require a registration of email addresses, hence the CGI-page.

I won't be implemented this anytime soon though. But I'll certainly help if I can & if somebody want to do it

[Esben Mose Hansen]

Originally posted by Johan K:
I tried to test it. But I got this error message when I tried with port 6677 and later with port 16563. (0 vp, 0 req vp, map aran)

-------------------
An error occurred while attempting to launch game:

You must specify a valid port

My fault. I only allow ports between 2300 through 2400. This is to make it easier to understand my firewall logs. This should have been written in the error response.

I'll update the page soon. I wanted the port to be a dropdown selection in any case.

[Esben Mose Hansen]

OK, to reply to the rest of the replies in one fell swoop:

The server is not too hard to break.Only the dominions II part should break. I have a change in my head which should make it much harder to break, but that would have to wait.

I don't know what the tempfile problem is (Gandalf writes that it is a windowsthing), but restart of the server is certainly possible if it become an issue. It would actually be the same change as above, funny enough.

Enjoy!

[PhilD]

OK, I'm feeling stupid this morning.

I started a game, and the site tells me it's fine, running on port 2350 and all...

But I cannot find an IP address to connect to. Did I miss something, or is there, somewhere, a Dominions 2 server that's accepting connections, only nobody knows where?